SiteGrinder is a plug-in for Adobe Photoshop that helps you convert Photoshop designs into whole web sites. SiteGrinder uses a simple layer naming scheme to designate rollover states, and more. It supports popup menus, direct conversion of styled Photoshop text to HTML, XHTML and CSS.
SiteGrinder successfully turns Adobe Photoshop into an easy-to-use and powerful website design and production tool.
While SiteGrinder is not aimed solely at the web neophyte, a SiteGrinder-equipped designer with no previous web experience can use only their Photoshop skills to go from concept to deployment of a professional, standards-compliant site in mere hours with no slicing or programming.
The difficulty of this task is invisible to the user as SiteGrinder builds graphics, text, and interactivity using modern web standard technologies and takes into account tricky requirements like cross-platform browser compatibility.
You know Photoshop, SiteGrinder knows CSS, HTML, and web image formats.
You tell SiteGrinder about special layers, like buttons, by adding "hints" to the layer names.To the right you can see how the words "button", "rollover", and "popup" are the only things required to create interactivity.
Once you've added a few hints you can open SiteGrinder and build your page with one mouse-click. This unique system works the way you do, turning web design into a more creatively satisfying activity. Enable your web site's functionality as you design it, quickly testing it out live in a web browser whenever you feel like it.
Such a flexible workflow even allows you to make major design changes, like selecting a new background color, at the very last minute without headaches!
You may wonder how SiteGrinder can make many web pages from a single Photoshop document. The answer is easy! Photoshop has a little-used but powerful tool called the "layer comps palette". This palette allows you to save and name particular document states, including the position and visibility of every layer.
All you have to do is make the document look the way a page on your site should and then make a layer comp. Then set up the next page and repeat. SiteGrinder will use those comps to decide what to include on the web pages it produces.
Even cooler: if your layer comp names match your button names then SiteGrinder will link them automatically. You don't even have to provide URLs!
Here are some key features of "SiteGrinder":
· Generate Web Graphics with no Slicing
· SiteGrinder automatically converts your image and shape layers to web graphics and positions them perfectly on the resulting web pages. As it builds, SiteGrinder even eliminates redundant graphics and merges layers when possible to minimize download size. It's a snap!
· Convert Styled Photoshop Text to Styled Web Text
· SiteGrinder converts Photoshop Type layers directly into styled CSS text on web pages. Photoshop character and paragraph styles are preserved including character and paragraph settings. Text can optionally scroll and have multiple hyperlinked phrases.
· Create Buttons with Rollovers and Popups
· Text and image buttons are an integral part of any web page and SiteGrinder is the easiest way to make them. Buttons can have rollovers, and even popups by just adding the hints "button", "rollover", and "popup" to the end of layer names.
· Make Custom Image Portfolios/Galleries Fast
· Yes, there are a lot of tools to create web portfolios. We think SiteGrinder 2 Pro is superior because it is simple, fast, totally flexible, and makes galleries that are organically part of your larger SiteGrinder site.
· Set Up Multi-Level Menus Without Programming
· Creating navbars, menus and submenus on web pages can be very tricky... unless you use SiteGrinder. You can turn a single text layer into a multi-item menu by just adding - you guessed it - the word "-menu" to the end of the layer name. The submenus can be as deep as you like.
· Create Many Linked Pages From One Document
· SiteGrinder generates an entire website's worth of pages in a single pass. You decide which elements (like a navbar) can appear on every page and which elements appear only on specific pages. Best of all, your SiteGrinder buttons automatically link to matching pages - no tedious and error-prone entering of web addresses!
· Provide Forms for Email, Google Maps, More!
· SiteGrinder 2 Pro employs a straightforward way to define multiple form elements in a single Photoshop type layer. Built in support for email forms makes it easy to add a contact page to your site. Generic forms are also supported. Use them for direction finding, searching, anything!
· Decorate your Backgrounds with Colors & Tiles
· SiteGrinder 2 supports custom background colors for different areas of your pages. SiteGrinder 2 Pro adds a variety of easy to use background image tile features, including vertical and horizontal repeating and backgrounds that remain in place as content scrolls.
· Generate Animated Flash slideshows from images
· SiteGrinder 2 Pro can take a folder of jpegs and turn it into a cool animated Flash slideshow for your site. Choose different transition styles, durations, and even assign hyperlinks for each slide.
· Add Flash and Other Multimedia to Your Pages
· SiteGrinder 2 Pro makes it easy to place multimedia elements on pages. Flash, Animated GIF, Quicktime & Windows video, and MP3 music are all built in. You can even link to media from remote locations over the internet!
· Expand your Page Flexibility with Growing Areas
· SiteGrinder 2 Pro can create page areas which adjust vertically on the fly if the browser changes font sizes or if you edit the content of the area after SiteGrinder builds the pages. "Footer" elements positioned below these areas will move up or down as needed to accommodate the new size.
· Exploit PHP, Use In-Line or External HTML
· SiteGrinder is designed to hide the complexity of HTML and other web infrastructure, but for maximum adaptability SiteGrinder 2 Pro does allow advanced users to add arbitrary code to their pages wherever they like. SiteGrinder 2 Pro can also intelligently import folders of HTML files when it builds to create a huge number of pages from a single page design.
Requirements:
· Photoshop 7 and higher
· Photoshop Element 6, 7 or 8
Limitations:
· SiteGrinder logo watermark over the output
What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]
New features:
· SiteGrinder 3.1 with the Commerce add-on now supports Paypal Standard
· There is a new "Site Info" window that allows more site management, such as finding your site directory, converting local sites to remote and saving as static more easily
· New commands to delete builds without deleting the build settings set in the Design Manager
· Now supports the Exif-2 metadata identifiers
· Google doc xmedia no longer requires CURL to be dynamic
Fixes:
· A CSS redeployment problem was identified and fixed
· Auto-merging of layers is less aggressive
· Horizontal menus handle inappropriate leading amounts better
· Updating xmedia remotely now correctly synchronizes the display
· Unusual movefrom/hovershow in panels is fixed
· Problems using movefrom/hovershow on a -pagesize layer is fixed
· More upload and permission settings fixes to support more hosting companies
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